My friend and sometime antagonist Don Merritt advised me quite a while ago that when seeking more readership for a blog, we need to strictly define our topic. He, for instance, has split his blog in two. One blog is on writing. The other is where he tackles anything that's not about writing.

As yet, I haven't followed his advice, because I  don't see a distinction between writing and engaging the spirit. I see writing, and living as a writer or I suppose any sort of artist, as spiritual exercise. Any artist will admit to at times slipping or plunging into a condition wherein we seem to receive the story, image, character or whatever. And all who have experienced this condition find it far more pleasant, and more likely to produce quality work, than laboring with the mind.

If someone contends that what I call inspiration is no more than a connection to a different part or function of the brain, I won't argue. I'm not trying to define or explain, only to get inspired more often and perhaps more deeply. 

William Blake felt so inspired, he claimed everything he wrote came straight from God. Writers of what we call scripture probably felt the same. Maybe they were nuts. Maybe not. 

Robert Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, argued that Quality is real, absolute and elemental. In my approach to the world, Quality and God are the same, and to truly seek Quality in art (or in life) is to seek God. I thought of italicizing truly, but decided that might feel preachy.

Anyway, I'm not ready to spilt my thoughts or my blog in two. 

About a year ago, a voice in my mind advised, "Play more golf." Since it came so clear and I liked the message, I decided the speaker was God. If you think I'm crazy, that's okay.

So I asked, "Yeah? Then where do I get the time and the money? " All that came was a whispery chuckle. 

The past year, things have gotten ever busier, and money has found ever more means of escape. If I play golf once a month, I feel extravagant, though golf has long been a kind of therapy. At least it's the best means I've found for allowing my mind a break from all other pursuits, ambitions, trials, concerns, and tribulations. Which is why, I presumed, God would suggest I play more.

But the obvious answer isn't always correct. Here's my latest answer:

Golf is largely a mind game. The attitude with which we approach a round, or a shot, decides its success. One part of attitude is setting a goal. At least a hundred times I've asked myself, should I attempt to shoot par and measure my performance against that standard, even though I'm bound to fall short? Or, should I attempt to shoot bogies (one over par)?

An eighth grade teacher must've thought I was troubled by the pressure of having a mother who taught in our school. She took me aside and gave this peculiar advice: "Don't worry about getting A's. B's are fine. They'll get you wherever you want to go." 

B's are like bogies. All through high school and college, until graduate school, I aimed for B's and rarely got disappointed. And I've gone through life as a bogie golfer. I come home from games feeling slightly uplifted if I scored an 87 (three under bogie), and slightly dismayed if I shot 93 (three over). That, I'm finding, is a lousy attitude. A fellow who has played the game for as many years as I have shouldn't settle for bogies. 

Since each new hole is a new game, I can choose to address each one as a potential par or as likely bogie. If I choose the former, I get dismayed more often. Choose the latter, I get uplifted more often. And each of those conditions translates into better or worse concentration, meaning more or less tension, the primary mental elements of the golf swing.

But yesterday, the voice came back, with such clarity that I decided it was feeding me the reason it told me to play more golf. This time it said, "Go for birdies." 

For those who avoid the game I'll explain. A par three hole is short enough so you should be able to reach the green in one shot, where you can finish with two putts. A par four hole, you should be able to reach in two and finish with two putts. But if you hit the right shot to the green, and use only one putt, you score birdie.

"If I always go for birdies," I asked, "won't I be discouraged most of the time?" God knows, a discouraged golfer gets tense and loses concentration.

"That depends," I heard. "Why get discouraged unless it's the last hole you'll ever play?"

Those, I believe, are words to live by. There is always, or most always, the next hole. 

I'm no longer the following the advice of my eighth grade math teacher. Every hole I play, I'm going for birdie, even though I know I probably won't get one. But I'll be choosing optimism. And making that choice eighteen times a round will affect my attitude about other pursuits.

My dad was an optimist, or he tried to be. But his ventures usually landed him in a mess. He went broke plenty of times. Which made my mom, of the Great Depression generation, ever more pessimistic. She was a fervent believer in Murphy's law, and advised me, in ways both subtle and blunt, to prepare for the worst. Hence my affinity for bogies. 

Should I live long enough, and should I play enough golf with this new dedication, and should I succeed in bringing new optimism to each hole, no matter what I suffered on the last one, I'll begin to see optimism overcome the less productive attitudes. And we all know optimism is healthier and more likely to prompt creativity and inspiration. Right?

One of my bad habits is assessing the value of each day as it passes by what tasks I've accomplished. Someday I may kick the habit entirely. For now, though, I'm  going to alter it, on account of a realization. 

I realized that the tasks don't matter so much as the good ideas that come. 

When we analyze stories, we're wise to consider the climax, (the turning point upon which the success or failure of the character's quest depends), not as an action but as the thought or decision that propels the character toward the necessary action. 

Likewise, a valuable accomplishment won't happen unless a good idea sets it into motion.

Now, a good idea isn't worth much unless it's somehow acted upon. Lots of folks are flooded with good ideas and intentions to bring the ideas to life but never find the motivation to proceed.

But for those of us obsessed with carrying out what good ideas we're given, if we don't accomplish a single task, so what? We're not drones. What we're about isn't tasks but good ideas. The tasks will get done by and by.

Besides, this outlook makes me feel lighter.

1-11-10

To conclude this discussion on becoming a bestseller, let's return to the comment that sparked this discussion, which, in case you're just tuning in, began with the November 27 post:

"A Perelandra College writing student recently commented she wants to be a bestselling author so she can enlighten or awaken people."

In the film Citizen Kane, Kane's oldest friend comments that getting rich is no big trick; all it takes is to want money more than anything in the world.

What that means for this discussion is, the more passionately you want to succeed and are willing and able to sacrifice, the better your chances. Nothing can guarantee you'll become a bestseller. But your odds will increase to the degree that you:

• prioritize writing above all other pursuits

• study the craft

• study the elements of the bestsellers you most admire or want to emulate

• find a genre with whose priorities and essential themes you agree

• determine what draws readers to that genre and use that knowledge in planning and composing your stories

• pinpoint the readers you believe will become fans of your work, and discover ways to reach them

• find time and energy to study book marketing and apply what you learn

• diligently seek the right agent and publisher

Or, you could just sit down and write what comes naturally and get lucky. It happens. I've heard at least a dozen bestselling authors attribute their success largely to luck. But they may only say that to sound humble. When you hear fiction writers talk, keep in mind we're professional liars.

My wife and a friend have a thriller idea they want to explore. Neither of them have written any long fiction. They talked about their chances of making a fortune with this story, and her friend remarked, "I mean, it's not rocket science."

When she passed that remark on to me, I said, "Yeah. He's right. It's probably harder."

Most of us aren't going to become bestsellers, but that's no tragedy unless that ambition is the only reason we write.

I could list a number of reasons I've spent my adult life as a novelist. You've got your own reasons you might want to list. That way, you won't be disappointed if you don't succeed in reaching some goal you never even set as a goal.

If you hope to write a bestseller, it's wise to create a story people claim they couldn't put down, or that it kept them up reading all night. A page-turner.

Here are some clues about writing a page-turner, from Kurt Vonnegut, Michael Connelly, Robert Crais and Raymond Chandler.  

Mike Connelly gave a talk in which he mentioned that he tried to put a question on every page of his novels. If we ponder the kinds of questions we can offer, we can recognize a whole world of possibilities. Plot questions major and minor: Did the butler do the murder? Is the fellow in the beret an accomplice?  Character questions: Why does Joe sneer when referring to his ex? Questions prompted by detail: Where did Myrna get the scar?

Someone dedicated to breaking the best-seller code might go to one of Connelly's novels and compile a list of the questions that arise page by page. 

Last year at Murder in the Grove, a swell conference in Boise, Idaho, Robert Crais gave a keynote talk and informed us that he had learned from Raymond Chandler's letters that Chandler attempted to put something interesting on every page. And, according to Crais, Chandler wrote in longhand on steno pads so that the small pages would force him to include more interesting stuff. As what's interesting and what's not is mighty subjective, I won't expand on this technique except to suggest that we'd be wise to consider what interests the type of reader we're seeking. Some enjoy literary allusions, while others would rather read about autopsies or the firing range of a certain gun. 

Recently at the Men of Mystery luncheon in Irvine, California, Mike Connelly talked about a method Kurt Vonnegut proposed. I recalled Vonnegut's visit to the University of Iowa. Three times, in a class, at an open lecture, and again at a party after the lecture, he stressed that the most important factor in creating dramatic tension was building a character with whom we can sympathize and showing that the character desperately wants something he can't readily obtain.

That's sound and standard advice. But Mike added a twist. He said Vonnegut proposed that on every page a character should want something.

Let's say on page 32, Maurice wants a hamburger. Page 33, he wants a kiss from his mother. Page 34, he wants to stop in a liquor store for a lottery ticket.  As the story proceeds and the wants add up, not only do the questions (will he get what he wants) build and sustain tension, we also come to know Maurice darned well.

Michael Connelly and I began in the mystery field about the same time. He lived in L.A., I lived in San Diego. He, Alan Russell, and I did some traveling and book signings together. I consider Mike both a friend and a writer from whom I've learned quite a bit.

His career has developed the way a career is supposed to, with a readership that grows book after book. I've got some thoughts about why.

During college, Mike decided to become a writer of crime fiction. But instead of jumping right in and, like most of us, writing about situations we've only read or watched dramas about, he chose to major or minor  (I forget which) in journalism and become a crime reporter. This decision put him way ahead of most novelists for two reasons. First, by the time he began writing novels, he had seen and learned plenty that could make his stories feel authentic. And, as a journalist, he learned how to write clearly, which English majors, charmed  by style and rhetoric, may never do.

In Harry Bosch, the Los Angeles policeman Mike built his series upon, he chose a main character loaded with conflicts. Harry is a battle scarred Vietnam vet. His mother, a prostitute, was murdered. He's a lone wolf in a profession whose job description emphasizes teamwork. Often I've heard people comment about Bosch as a character. They love him and want to read more and more about him. My best guess as to why he's so compelling is that his character revolves around a certain definable trait. Bosch is haunted. Which makes him somehow simple and complex at once. Those who would create a character as compelling as Harry might try finding a single adjective to describe him or her and using that word as a unifying principle. 

I don't know whether Mike intended to write for the niche "police procedurals," but he has become a household word amongst fans of that sub-genre. The idea of finding a niche may seem limiting to writers, but to marketers and p.r. folks it's golden. If you fail to define your niche, you're not likely to get your book published, let alone become a bestseller.

When the time came for Mike to try to sell his first novel, he set out to find not only an agent, but the right agent, whom he found by learning who represented the authors he most admired and to whose work he believed his novel bore a resemblance. The tactic worked, and the agent he landed with, he has stuck with ever since. 

For advice about finding and working with agents, go to my web site and subscribe to my newsletter. 

Most of us writers are introverts, which Mike appears to be. But since part of our job is to impress or befriend people who can spread the word about our books, when we're in the presence of fans, booksellers, librarians and such, many of us attempt to pretend we're extroverts. We act like somebody we're not.  This has never been Mike's m.o.  What he appears to have done, is be himself. And that tactic worked. He's awfully well liked. I've heard plenty of talk about him, and never a bad word. 

Also, Mike learned from masters.  But that deserves a whole other story, which I'll dish out next time.

Happy New Year.

Sandra Cisneros and I were good friends in graduate school and now and then since, so I have some perspective on her career and can offer a couple suggestions about how to follow her path to fame and prosperity:

Find your distinctive voice. Sandra began as a poet. Her first book, House on Mango Street, which I suspect may still be the most popular, is a collection of stories in some cases so brief you wouldn't go far afield calling them prose poems. And they all come from a voice at once both wise and youthful. 

Seek out your niche and build from there. Arte Publico, a small publisher from Texas, originally published House on Mango Street. I suspect they promoted the book to college Chicano Studies professors and to high schools in areas with a substantial Latino population, because in those venues it gradually became not only a hit but a staple. 

Here's a link to an article about the future of publishing that advocates publishers would be wise to dedicate themselves to finding niche markets. publishers, but I suspect it relates to authors as well. I'll give a snippet from it:

"A stark illustration of this hit my radar screen last month.  A major agent told me that he sold a Mind, Body, Spirit author’s book to Random House, which sold 12,000 copies.  He sold the next book by the same author to niche publisher Hay House, which sold 200,000 copies! And Hay House, with over a million email addresses of people all interested in the same type of book, probably spent less on marketing to sell eight times as many."

Sure, finding a distinctive voice and a marketable niche probably won't be easy. The voice has to come from your unique personality, or you won't be able to sustain it. 

The niche? Well, I've been wrestling with this question for a spell, and the best niche I can imagine for my books is that they are most liable to appeal to former English majors with History minors (or vice versa) who appreciate somewhat gritty detective fiction and aren't offended by Christian characters who may be either heroic or despicable. 

If can identify a niche market for your work but doubt reaching it will allow you to support yourself and family with your books, take a look at some of the magazines that appear to thrive. I'd bet if your book sold to one out of every ten people who read English and put ketchup on broccoli, you could pay off the credit cards and buy rental property.

Now the question becomes, how to reach our target audience?

Until I find the answer, I'll leave that issue to marketing pros and move on to describing other paths to literary success, next time. So I'll remind you to subscribe. 

So, suppose you want to become a bestseller not by writing what people want to read but by introducing them to your view of the world, with the stories you feel compelled to create.

Having been around a while, I've gotten some insider knowledge about careers that worked like you want yours to.

John Irving was my first teacher at Iowa, and he impressed upon us that we should not expect to make a living writing. We should accept the fact that (lacking wealth or generous spouses) we would need another career. Our stories should be our passion and avocation. Okay, but a couple years later, The World According to Garp made him a fortune. He's been a bestseller ever since. 

To follow Irving's path, I'd suggest you:  1. have a wild imagination and get over any fear of using it; 2. diligently study the plotting of Charles Dickens, as Irving did;  3. become a master humorist and express your humor in quirky ways.

Richard Russo and I were friends at the University of Arizona. Though he had already finished the MFA program, I read and critiqued several of his stories. Since then, he has become a master. Film adaptations of his novels have starred Paul Newman. His books all become bestsellers. And they're mighty fine books, both enjoyable and thoughtful, as are John Irving's.

To follow Russo's path, you might: 1. seek out advice and when you get it, ponder to glean all you can from it; 2. find an agent who is in the business of nurturing authors; 3. build your stories around unique and colorful characters; 4. place those characters in an environment, such as Russo's Mohawk, that may intrigue folks in the publishing business, in the case of Mohawk, because it reminds them of their weekend retreat.

If neither of those paths seem the one for you, come back. I'll steer you in some other directions.

So, you want to become a bestselling writer but also want to guide readers into new realms, new ways of thinking. Here's a problem you'll no doubt run into:

Most readers don't want to learn new ways of thinking. They may like learning new facts, but regarding their outlook on the world, they want writers to validate and lend ammunition to their current attitudes. If you want to change Democrats to Republicans or Christians to athiests, good luck. Most people don't buy books that will challenge their belief. 

So, along with learning how to craft a suspenseful story, the most effective formula for becoming a bestseller is to share the attitudes of the majority. Which makes life difficult for those of us who don't.

A very well read and learned librarian told me that successful writers are those whose internal metaphors and symbols, conscious and unconscious, are  in accord with the ones in most people's minds. If this describes you, then your stories will come alive to those people and you can paint vivid pictures with a minimum of words. But suppose you're a bit quirky, and your internal symbols and metaphors are out of sync with the multitude's. You can attempt to discern what symbols and metaphors work best for most readers, say, by attending critique groups. But this may prove a challenge that would require more than one lifetime.

Similarly, if your beliefs about conspiracies or politics or spiritual growth or romance are close to what your readers believe and you can express their thoughts or desires, perhaps more fluently than they can, you may be half way to riches and fame.

But suppose your attitudes are somewhat singular. Suppose you think for yourself and you want to express what you think and that's a main reason you write. And suppose you dream of being looked up to, for financial reasons, by your brother the mortgage broker.

Next post I'll offer a few solutions. 

A Perelandra College writing student recently commented that she wants to be a bestselling author so she can enlighten or awaken people. This gave me pause, and prompted considerable reflection about what makes a bestselling author. 

To make any sense of this topic, we need a solid definition of bestseller. 

One author might claim bestseller status because a given bookstore tallies its sales by the month and his book ranked among the top ten during one of those months, perhaps because he visited for a booksigning and drew dozens of buyers, since it was his hometown.

Another author, whose long time career was public relations, developed an elaborate plan to lure folks to an online book launch party. She was attempting to land in the top hundred selling books of the day on amazon.com and thereby claim bestseller status.

Even the bestselling claims that give specifics may not be as reputable as they seem. If an author, by luck or design, happens to be featured at signings in the same week in the four or five stores the local newspaper surveys to determine its bestseller list, this may give a valid yet misleading claim to bestseller status. Such things can even occur in major cities, say Los Angeles, with the Times.

For this discussion, I'll define bestseller as a book that shows up on many bestseller lists and puts the author in a position to quit his day job without rousing anger or trepidation in his family.

And I'll turn to the heart of the matter by suggesting that the desire to become a bestselling author may be in conflict with other, and perhaps more important, desires. So those who aspire to be read by millions had best pause in their quest and answer a few questions before plotting their strategy.

First question: Do you want to write about what you witness, experience, and/or believe, or about what people want to read?

To revisit this topic every few days, in case it leads to some revelations, look right for the Subscribe gizmo and sign up. 

Here's a rather long quote from Josephine Tey (the speaker is Grant in The Singing Sands) 

"It's a harmless sort of weakness," Tad said, with a tolerant lift of a shoulder.

"That is just where you are wrong. It is the utterly destructive quality. When you say vanity, you are thinking of the kind that admires itself in the mirror and buys things to deck itself out in. But that is merely personal conceit. Real vanity is something quite different. A matter not of person but of personality. Vanity says, "I must have this because I am me." It is a frightening thing because it is incurable. You can never convince Vanity that anyone else is of the slightest importance; he just doesn't understand what you are talking about. He will kill a person rather than be put to the inconvenience of doing a six month stretch."

"But that's being insane."

"Not according to Vanity's reckoning. And certainly not in the medical sense. It is merely Vanity being logical. It is, as I said, a frightening trait, and the basis of all criminal personality. Criminals--true criminals, as opposed to the little man who cooks the accounts in an emergency or the man who kills his wife when he finds her in bed with a stranger--true criminals vary in looks and tastes and intelligence and method as widely as the rest of the world does, but they have one invariable characteristic, their pathological vanity."

I'm thinking about M. Scott Peck, in People of the Lie, arguing that all of what we call evil is rooted in narcissism, and of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley character who is perfectly charming except he needs to bump off whomever gets into his way. 

And I'm considering widening Tey's analysis to include even those we don't usually label criminals but just dishonest, such as liars and all kinds of cheats. 

Of course there are degrees of vanity. Still, observing people from this angle might serve to warn us about those we ought to keep our distance from. And no doubt it would help us write real and convincing  bad guys.

I'm developing a class in memoir for Perelandra College.  Yesterday a sort of introduction came to me. 

Here's a note I'll send students:

Unless you're a celebrity or have lived through some wild and overt (not interior) drama, nobody except maybe friends and family wants to read about you. At least when picking up a memoir, they want to read about themselves or people they know and are puzzled about.

So, to find more than ten readers for you memoir, you need to: 1. become such a stunning prose stylist that the one out of a hundred or so potential readers who appreciate fine writing will keep reading for that alone, or 2. focus your story on an element of your life or the overcoming of a problem that everybody, most everybody, or lots of people can relate to on account of their own experience.

The best example that comes to mind, I had the honor of teaching a class Philip Yancey attended. He's a masterful writer of non-fiction, but he hadn't yet tackled a memoir, and he was preparing to write one. We talked afterward and he said that during the class he had recognized the focus of his memoir. The story would be overcoming a childhood spent around a toxic kind of religion.

I'd bet a few hundred million of us can relate to that. 

I'm feeling a kinship to Pontius Pilate, as I keep asking myself "What is truth?" 

What's got me so ponderous is, I'm creating a class on memoir for Perelandra College, and at the same time beginning to pull together a collection of articles, hoping they can become the rough draft or the outline for a memoir.

My question isn't some James Frey issue about whether I should include a blockbuster scene that never happened. And it's not about distrusting memory. I'm comfortable writing scenes and thoughts from the long past as best I can recall them. If I later discovered it was really Gretl who said something I attributed to Harry, I would lose no sleep over the error. 

What's got me stumped is bigger than detail, and more thematic. 

My life is rocky at best these days. For now, at least, I don't intend to tell what happened to land me here. I'll just confess to struggling with depression and ask, because our past is the story of what got us to where we are, can I honestly conclude the memoir in the uplifting way I would prefer to, by ending the story at a time when I felt on top of the world?

Suppose I were a tycoon, and the theme of my life was that diligence pays off. Suppose I made a billion dollars, then lost it all. Is the truth that diligence made me a billion dollars or that it made me lose a billion dollars? It all depends when I end the story, right? Suppose I go all the way and end with losing a billion, then publish the book and make millions on royalties. Does that make my story a lie?

What I'm asking is, how can we honestly know the theme of our life story or stories until after we die?

I can think of a half-dozen pat answers for this dilemma, but none of them seem to work.

I considered ending a previous post with a quote from Branch Rickey, but realized the quote deserved to be more than a punch line.

For those who don't know the man: Branch Rickey  (1881 –  1965) was an baseball executive best known for: breaking Major League Baseball's color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson and drafting Roberto Clemente; creating the framework for the modern minor league system; and introducing the batting helmet. His achievements and outspoken Christian faith earned him the nickname 'the Mahātmā.'"

This wise and accomplished fellow advised,  "Prefer excesses of enthusiasm to the complacency of wisdom."

Which doesn't work as a punch line, as it's easily misinterpreted to mean prefer enthusiasm to wisdom. 

To me, it means, when wisdom becomes complacent, it threatens to nullify the enthusiasm that arises from passion, imagination, or inspiration. 

In the context of writing, the proper role of wisdom (craft) is to serve enthusiasm.

For instance, wisdom ought to remind us that not every passage delivered from a passionate heart is a gem to be shared with readers. Some of them will only speak to us, or only to to us in a certain frame of mind. And even the real gems might not deserve to be in the context we've placed them, if they intrude upon the story.

All of which is why some folks claim writing can't be taught and some claim it can. Craft can be readily learned. Passion, imagination, and the openness to inspiration, not so readily.

 

A forwarded email told of a master violinist who spent time in a subway station playing a most intricate piece on a violin worth millions. But few people paid him or his music any attention. 

Raymond Carver, a master of the short story, commented that a writer doesn't need to be the smartest person on the block, but should be able to look with amazement at a leaf or an old shoe.

We writers need to pay attention.

But many of our heads are spinning too fast to allow us to stop and look. No doubt we could benefit from practicing some of the attentiveness meditation that's popular these days, unless the idea of practicing anything else than what we're already doing sends us into quakes of horror.

Lately, I've been writing, running Perelandra College where I also teach, and raising my amazing seven year old Zoe pretty much on my own. I'm determined she'll stay happy and as innocent as one can be in a perilous world, and that she'll grow up emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and financially able to pursue whatever she's called to. 

All these tasks are privileges for which I'm grateful and which give me joy, but they don't leave much time to pay attention to leaves or old shoes. I could quit running the college, or teaching, and when the time's right, I will. 

Meanwhile I often remind myself of  the way my friend Bob cooks and washes dishes, at a leisurely clip, as though he'd as just as soon be doing those chores as anything else. The only way we busy folks can wash dishes without rushing is to convince ourselves that the other chores on our agenda aren't as urgent as we've considered them.

Us Christians are advised that the only crucial chore is communing with God. Besides, in all but rare cases, the key to succeeding with our goals, whether they be clean kitchens or novels, isn't urgency but persistence. 

Lately, I keep thinking about Bob Dylan and King David and the benefit of being ornery. Dylan's "Desolation Row" is a favorite song of mine. I get a kick out of the lines "Yes I received your letter yesterday about the time the doorknob broke. When you asked me what I was doing, was that some kind of joke? All these people that you mention, yes I know them, they're quite lame. I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name."

Another of my favorite Dylan lines is, "I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes, and just for that one moment I could be you. I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes. You'd know what a drag it is to see you."

King David got so ornery in some of his psalms, wishing everything but good on his enemies, for years I puzzled about how a fellow so bent toward revenge and apparently lacking in forgiveness could be not only a big contributor to the Bible but could get himself referred to as a "man after God's own heart."

I'm neither brave nor ignorant enough to launch into an analysis of God's heart. I'll stick to what I know best, which is the process of writing. 

Philip Yancey's book Prayer got me to reassessing King David by pointing out that the man's excesses aren't meant to be taken as righteous but as honest frustrations of a fellow who has taken some major hits. I was reminded of this last weekend when Pastor Ed suggested that our prayers oughtn't be nice and respectful but real. If we're frustrated, be frustrated. If we're confused, be confused. Furious, go ahead, let it out. We all get those ways, and (I'll add) to pretend we don't is an attack upon everybody we're trying to fool.

I've long thought that if I built a church, I'd inscribe into the wall over the entrance, "No Bullshit." (Of course I'd be tempted to censor and make it "No BS" but since everybody would translate anyway, what's the point?)

As I'm in danger of skating off into tangents here, I'll return to Bob Dylan. Anybody who doesn't appreciate him as a lyricist either hasn't listened or has my sincere sympathy. But, he's not always good, either in a moral or an artistic sense. Sometimes he's downright mean, sometimes he's brokenhearted, sometimes world weary, sometimes flippant, sometimes smitten. He writes insightful commentaries, ho hum ballads, sappy love songs. 

My point is, he's real, and maybe his willingness to be real is a essential part of his gift, and a key to his mastery.  And maybe, like King David (I'm asking for trouble here),  he's a man after God's own heart, at least when declining to censor his emotions.

So I finished The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles. Unless another wild idea or inspiration arrives before tomorrow, I'll send it off. It's scheduled for publication May 2010. It's the sixth book (though the earliest in chronology), in what I'm calling the Tom Hickey California Century series, which is a hit and miss chronicle of the years during which California became the promised land and later the place whose customs, attitudes, and values shaped the world.

Now that I can return to real life in the present, I'm realizing once again a reason I write novels. For the past few months, life has been treacherous. This past week was the most distressing. When I'm doing chores, driving, trying to sleep, taking care of Zoe, pursuing anything but writing, my mind whirls, besieged by questions and concerns.

A while back, my friend Mark told me he planned to start writing again once he'd worked out some family and financial issues. He said he couldn't write with all that on his mind. I said, most writers I know, if they waited for respites from such issues, would never finish a book.

One solid piece of wisdom I've picked up: as long as we're thinking about ourselves and our concerns, we're in grave danger of becoming distressed and unhappy. When we turn to thinking about other people, we rise above that distress and at least have a chance to feel joyful.

Similarly, writing takes us out of ourselves. I've gone to live in 1926 with a bunch of fascinating characters. The present, with all its fears, worries and dilemmas, couldn't reach me there.

I've had it. 

All Labor Day weekend, while I should've been living in 1926 Los Angeles (as that's when and where the novel I'm trying to finish takes place), I couldn't quit returning to mental and gut responses to the flack about Obama's talk to students.

As a parent, an educator, and a believer in American principles, I've been sickened to read and hear of people using, for the sake of partisan politics, the President's attempt to encourage students to stay in school, set goals, believe in themselves and work hard.

My big daughter, a high school assistant principal, had to endure enraged phone calls from parents.  A teacher at her school reported that his pastor asked parents to refuse to allow their children to view the video. My little daughter's school district declined to show the video until they had the chance to censor it "if appropriate."

Media commentators have referred to the speech as "indoctrination" and "mind control." Should we broaden the definitions of those terms to include the content of Mr. Obama's speech (the text of which is available at  www.whitehouse.gov), hardly a television show, classroom lesson, news article, or advertisement, and certainly no pastor's sermon, or parent's guidance, could escape fitting those labels.

All weekend, I kept recalling these lines from "The Second Coming," a poetic masterpiece by W.B. Yeats:

"Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity."

I don't believe those parents who made enraged phone calls are "the worst." But perhaps those who encouraged them to do so are, no matter if they are pastors. 

Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" between world wars, when frightened people were being recruited into terrible movements, while pastors for the most part stood by merely observing and declining to risk losing church members by speaking hard truths.

My current most fervent prayer is that our pastors begin to prove themselves braver than those.

While in the midst of the polishing the new Tom Hickey novel, whatever I'm inspired to write about, unless it regards the novel or 1920s Los Angeles, I try to shelve. 

Hence, not many posts these days.

Last night Zoe and I watched Chinatown. Not the '20s, but close enough. Of course I had to send my little girl out of the room a few times, and get creative with certain explanations. 

Zoe's questions and observations entertained me nearly as much as the movie did. 

When, during a drought, Jake the detective follows Hollis Mulray to the coast and sits on a rocky cliff watching while Mulray observes water pour out of the storm drains, Zoe got scared for Jake because she saw a dinosaur hiding in the rocks. Which puts a great film into a whole new light.

We have a flexible one hour a day time limit on television watching. Zoe asked if movies counted the same as tv shows. I said if it's a good movie,  longer is okay.  I remarked that a half hour of Sponge Bob might be plenty, while two hours of Mary Poppins seems reasonable. 

Zoe said, "Yeah, because Sponge Bob shows us his underwear and Mary Poppins doesn't."

The moral: if you haven't got a seven-year-old to watch movies with, borrow one.  

I'm not somebody who washes his car every week. Although I often admire shiny cars, making mine shine has never seemed to rate a high priority, unless I'm going to sell the thing. 

But a month or so back, when I stopped into Pep Boys looking for a roof rack, since Zoe and I were about to leave on a camping trip, I spotted a bottle of Turtle Wax Carnuba and decided t buy it, to give the old Corolla a thin skin of protection before we headed off into desert sand storms. 

However, the roof rack took longer to assemble than I'd planned, as did packing. So the Corolla didn't get waxed until today.  

When a car hasn't gotten waxed in some years, stains appear, at least if the car is white. I supposed those stains would remain for eternity, but once I started rubbing, they began to vanish, which prompted me to rub more diligently and to remember The Karate Kid. When Mister Miyagi ordered the kid to polish the cars with a circular motion, that was only to teach him blocking, right?

Wrong. The circular motion works like magic, I discovered today. So does Turtle Wax Carnuba. 

As the stains continued to vanish, I remembered a lesson from long ago, when a book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance persuaded me to seek quality in a task I didn't see a lot of value in: paneling the interior of a Ford van. All the pains I went to, and the time spent, proved a small price for the pleasure I got from driving around in an aesthetically pleasing environment. 

Here's the lesson: whatever we approach with an effort to achieve quality not only gives us pleasure, it boosts our ability to devote ourselves to quality in everything else, such as writing, raising children, creating a business, or kicking field goals.

Besides, the shinier my Corolla becomes, the lighter the temptation to spend money I don't have on a replacement. Okay, it's travelled 165,000 miles. But not only did it take me 4000 miles to Chicago and back in June and another 3000 miles around the west in July without a sputter, it's almost as shiny as the new ones.

When the Bible admonishes us to do everything as unto the Lord, it's not just telling us how to make God or our employers happy. It's also serving up some mighty practical advice.

Now, I'll go out vacuum that lovely 2001 Corolla.